A PROTEST FROM OROVILLE.—As the most strenuous efforts seem unlikely to secure the funds needed in order to continue our full work, we look about to see where the knife can be applied. I thought that a vacation would do as little harm at Oroville as anywhere, and I sent word to close the school from June till September. The following protest came back signed by sixteen of the pupils: “Dear pastor.—We heard from you that you told Miss M. Deuel to close this school at present. We are very sorry, because this school is doing very well. We would like to understand the words of truth, but we cannot do it without the teacher’s help. So we hope you will consent to open this school continually. Some of the boys just became Christians. If school to be closed seems we like the sheep without a shepherd; perhaps we going other ways and fall in the river of death. Or, this Oroville have many precious souls; if this school to be continue may be other people come to school and hear who are speak the gospel of Christ and come to him, that their souls may be save.” They go on to say that they know that the school cannot but be smaller in summer than in winter, and that they will try to sustain it without a Chinese helper, but they cannot bear to have it closed. How could I be deaf to such an appeal? I wrote them to do their utmost to help me by their offerings and their prayers, and the school should be continued. I confess that I do not know how I am to maintain so large a work as ours now is, on resources so scanty; but when souls are asking after God I cannot shut away the only light that shines upon their path. I must trust God and trust God’s people, and move on. LETTERS FROM HONG SING.—Hong Sing has been a helper for four or five years. At present he is stationed at Santa Cruz, where special interest has existed for some time, and five of the pupils have been led to Christ. Two recent letters from this helper giving accounts of his discussions with the heathen about him have greatly interested me. They are too long to be inserted here, and I scarcely know how to condense them without spoiling the charm which comes from his queer attempts to get the English idioms. But I must make the endeavor to give one. It describes in a pleasant way some of the petty annoyances to which the Christian brethren are subjected by their heathen countrymen; annoyances which, he says, make him think of Paul and the other apostles; “though our trials it is a very trifle thing, compared with theirs, _nothing_; yet I am dismayed because I get impatient with them. I pray that God may open the blind of their mind that they may see the Salvation of Christ.”